TELEVISION

TELEVISION; Why Sparks Flew in Retelling the Tale of Flight 007

By STEPHEN FARBER

Published: November 27, 1988

LOS ANGELES—
On Aug. 31, 1983, A Russian fighter plane shot down a commercial 747 jetliner that was flying 300 miles off course over a Soviet military base. All 269 people aboard Korean Airlines Flight 007 were killed, including 63 Americans.

That shocking incident is the kind of story that would ordinarily be seized upon by television producers competing to find the next sensational docudrama. Yet, it has taken more than five years for the story of Flight 007 to reach television. Tomorrow night, NBC will broadcast ''Shootdown,'' starring Angela Lansbury as Nan Moore, the mother of one of the young men killed on the plane.

The long delay was prompted partly by the difficulty of arriving at the truth about the complex incident and partly by internal battles at the network over just how the story should be presented. An examination of the shaping of ''Shootdown'' reveals a good deal about how television attempts to deal with controversial political subject matter. In the uncommonly intense struggle that developed between the producers of the film and the network's broadcast standards department, what was at issue was a television producer's desire to make a film of political advocacy weighed against the network's commitment to balance and fair play.

The producers and the network censors became embroiled in a series of negotiations that led to significant changes in the film. Viewers will decide for themselves whether this process resulted in a more evenhanded film or one that was substantially compromised by network interference.

One reason for the unusual amount of scrutiny directed at ''Shootdown'' was the controversy surrounding the event itself. From the moment the news broke, there was tremendous press and public speculation about what really happened aboard the plane, at the Soviet military command and in the Pentagon. Conflicting theories have been advanced, from early charges that the Russians intentionally and coldbloodedly shot down a civilian airliner to charges that the captain of Flight 007 was working for the C.I.A. and was on an espionage mission over Soviet waters.

Even today many of the facts about the incident remain clouded in mystery, partly because hundreds of Government documents about the event are still classified and because the only official investigation of the shootdown was conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a group that admitted it had limited experience in such inquiries and incomplete access to relevant information. Several books have been written about the case - ''Shootdown'' by R. W. Johnson, ''K.A.L. 007-The Coverup'' by David Pearson and ''The Target Is Destroyed'' by Seymour Hersh - that come to very different conclusions about the disaster. With all of this contradictory material to assimilate, any dramatization of the subject was bound to be highly touchy.

The driving force behind the TV film was the executive producer, Leonard Hill, who first read ''Shootdown'' a couple of years ago. Mr. Johnson suggested that the flight was not an accidental overflight by the Korean jetliner but a deliberate intrusion into Soviet airspace for intelligence purposes; the author also charged that the U. S. Government had engaged in a cover-up of the facts after the catastrophe.

In 1986, Mr. Hill's associate, Joel Fields, attended a memorial service in New York City commemorating the third anniversary of the shootdown. There he met the families of people who had been killed aboard Flight 007, and he learned of their continuing efforts to unearth the truth about the incident. One of the people at that memorial service was Nan Moore, a worker at the Pentagon whose 27-year-old son had been aboard the plane and who has been involved in pressing for a full-scale Congressional investigation of the shootdown. When he learned about Mrs. Moore, Mr. Hill felt he had found what television movies often require - a personal approach to a complex political imbroglio. Mr. Hill secured the cooperation of Mrs. Moore, who asked only that the Government agency where she worked not be specified in the film.

Mr. Hill purchased Mr. Johnson's book and hired two writers from ''Cagney & Lacey,'' Judy Merl and Paul Eric Myers, to prepare a script. Their teleplay follows Mrs. Moore as, devastated by the loss of her son, she becomes involved with a group of victims' families struggling to learn the truth about the disaster; she gradually comes to believe that the Government is concealing information about the flight and that the K.A.L. plane may have been intentionally sent into Soviet airspace to test the speed of the Russians' military response.

The script drew upon interviews with Mrs. Moore and her daughter, Charlotte, along with independent research conducted by the writers. Among their consultants were Robert Allardyce, a former T.W.A. pilot and navigator, and John Keppel, a retired foreign-service officer. Both of them believe, based on their interpretation of radar tapes, flight patterns and navigational equipment aboard the aircraft, that the plane deliberately invaded Soviet airspace. Mr. Keppel, who was working in the State Department at the time of the U-2 reconnaissance flight over Russia in 1960, says, ''I sat in on meetings recommending the cover story that it was a weather plane, so I've had experience with people in Government not telling the truth.''